


she was you

by agentcalliope



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Family Feels, Female Friendship, Gen, Girls' Night, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Love, MAY'S LOVE FOR HER GIRLS IS STRONGER THAN ANY PROGRAMMING, sort of, spoilers for 4.22
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-14 05:10:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11201136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentcalliope/pseuds/agentcalliope
Summary: May learns about what happened to her LMD.She learns something about herself, too.





	she was you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [buckysbears (DrZebra)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrZebra/gifts).



> A happy, happy birthday to Leah. I can't imagine my life without you <3

* * *

First, they stick her in a room, sit her at a desk, and hand her a stack of paper.

 

“Fill it out.” The short man who never stops scratching says, as he scratches his beard.

“It shouldn’t be too hard; I hear you were quite familiar with paperwork once, Agent May.” The other man smirks-- an ugly smirk, a telling smirk-- exactly the kind of smirk May would love just to wipe off someone’s face.

An unfamiliar woman walks by, plants another stack of papers onto the desk, and leaves without speaking a word.

 

The two men stare at May, waiting for her to respond. The small man scratches his head now, gazing towards the floor, and the other begins to tap his foot.

“You _like_ paperwork, don’t you, Agent May?” The other man goads.

 

May blinks, and then she smiles.

 

The tiny man stops scratching and the other man stops his feet and she watches as that unpleasant, disgusting smirk disappears right off his face.

 

Her smile grows just a bit bigger.

May picks up a pen, and takes the first sheet off the pile.

-

It takes her a couple of hours, but once she’s done, she sits at the desk and waits for one of them, or both of them, to show up.

The scratching man appears, and May wonders if his scratching is an anxiety tick or a medical condition. He doesn’t meet her eyes, but glances to the forms on her desk and quickly back to the ground.

“Oh… okay.” He blubbers, his hand reaching up to scratch his arm. “That… that was fast.” He hastily gathers all the papers and hugs them to his chest, still gazing down at the floor. “I’ll… um… I’ll be right back.”

 

He scrambles away like a mouse, and May leans back in her seat, laces her fingers together, and waits for him to come back.

-

The other one comes this time, and this time he doesn’t have a smirk but a frown. She doesn’t move as he appears by her side, and throws another stack of papers onto her desk with the flick of his hand.

“Do it again.”

May pulls the sheets closer to her, and sees that they are blank.

“Do it. Again.” The other man repeats. When she doesn’t answer to that, he huffs.

“You answered every question _with_ the question!” His voice rises with fury, and she doesn’t have to look at him to know his hands have balled into fists.

“Is this _game_ for you, Agent May?”

“No.”

“No, _sir_.” The man clenches his teeth.

May turns her head quickly, and meets his eyes.

“As you said,” May responds without raising her voice. “I like paperwork.”

“Sir.” She adds.

His eyebrows narrow, and his lips form a tight line across his mouth. “I’ll send Ethan to get them when you have completed them. _Correctly._ ” He walks briskly away.

 

May picks up the pen to do the work a second time.

And this time, she writes in Mandarin.

-

After writing in Mandarin, she writes in Spanish. After Spanish, it’s French, and Italian. She finds it hard to believe that there’s no one on this damned spacecraft that can read any of those languages, or if they’re just messing with her like she’s messing with them.

 

Instead of the other man bringing the new papers this time, it’s the one he called Ethan, who places the stack on her desk with shaking hands.

“Um… can you… please fill them out this time? In English?” His shaking hands match his shaking voice. “I don’t want to get in t--trouble again.”

 

May shifts her gaze from the desk to him, this scratching man—this _boy_ , really-- this Ethan. He’s looking at the floor like he always does when he comes and he’s scratching both his eyes. No, he’s rubbing his eyes.

 

May forces herself to take a deep breath, and she starts writing for a final time.

-

She’s escorted by a man who smells like a sewer and a woman with only one eye down a hallway May has never been before. Overhead, the light flickers, and the hum of the generator ring in her ears. She has so many questions, but keeps them to herself, and keeps her eyes straight ahead.

She wonders where they’re taking her.

She wonders where the others are.

(May wonders—hopes, prays— that they’re okay.)

 

Suddenly they bring her to a halt, and the woman reaches into her pocket and brings out a piece of paper.

“Yep. Bunk C5.” The woman looks up from the paper and glares at May, her blue eye not kind, but not malicious. “You’re lucky. There are only two others assigned to this bunk.”

“Well, at least for now.” The man grunts, reaching out to type a code on the door.

“Breakfast is at 7:30 AM, you will receive further instruction then.”

The door opens with a beep, and they push May inside without another word.

The door slides shut.

 

For a moment, there is nothing.

 

May sees nothing, she hears nothing. She takes a deep breath and reaches out to feel the metal of the door, and tries to let that ground her.

“Who’s there?” A voice calls out. It’s hoarse, but firm. A voice that has sung and cried and shouted and laughed. A voice that May knows all too much. May inhales sharply, turning around to peer into the dark.

“Daisy?”

“May?” It’s not Daisy who answers, but Jemma.

May exhales.

“Jemma?” She lowers herself to the ground and gets on her hands and knees, reaching out with her hands before crawling forward. “Daisy?”

“May! We’re here!” They call out, and May inches her way towards their voices.

“Why aren’t there any lights?”

“Edward said it was to mimic the effects of nighttime.” Jemma says. “So we would sleep when we are supposed to.”

May feels a step with her hands, and lowers herself down carefully. “Who’s Edward?”

“The one who smells like crap.” Daisy pipes in. “May, I think I see you.”

May’s vision is getting accustomed to the dark, and she looks up to see a hand stretching down towards her. She grabs it, and lets it pull her up.

She’s pulled into a tight hug.

 

(She doesn’t pull away)

 

“We all had dinner after our placement tests, but you weren’t there!” May feels Jemma grip her arm. “We were all so worried.”

“Just took me a bit longer, I guess.”

She can practically see Daisy grinning. “You wrote in Mandarin?”

“Only the second time.”

Daisy snorts, and May can see well enough to know Jemma’s shaking her head, eyes wide, face contorted with worry.

“Jemma.” May reaches out blindly, touching lightly until she finds Jemma’s shoulder. She squeezes it gently. “I’m okay. It’s okay. I promise.”

 

(How can she promise anything else?)

-

May ends up pushing her mattress next to theirs.

Jemma and Daisy had already taken off their mattresses off the bunks and placed them side by side on the floor. They all lie down, close enough that they can feel the other’s warmth, their presence. May keeps her hands folded on her stomach, stares at the ceiling, and lets her mind finally catch up with everything that has happened recently.

 

It’s been quiet for a while, but Daisy’s been tossing and turning and Jemma’s been breathing too fast, so May knows that none of them were sleeping. After what seems like hours but could possibly only be minutes, Daisy grumbles next to her. “The least they could’ve done was give us a clock.”

Jemma grunts in agreement, but May remains silent. She stares at the ceiling, into the dark, and finally decides she wants to know. “What was she like?”

She can feel Jemma and Daisy casting a glance at each other.

“Who?” Jemma whispers.

“Me.” May says. “LMD me. What was she like?”

They’re both silent for a long, long time. “She was _you_ , May.” Daisy finally says. “We never thought she was anything but, until we learned she wasn’t.”

May nods, even though she knows that they can’t see her.

 

“If it wasn’t for her, we wouldn’t be alive.”

May sits up with a start, sharply turning her head towards Jemma, who sits up as well.

“She could’ve done what she was supposed to do. Blow Daisy and I up.”

Daisy sits up and looks at May. “But she didn’t. She let us go. She let us _live_.”

May blinks. “But why?”

 

“She was you, May.” Is what Jemma says. “She was you in every sense of the word.”

 

But this is what Jemma doesn’t say:

She loved us enough to let us go.

She loved us enough to sacrifice herself so we could live.

 

She loved us, like you love us.

 

(Jemma doesn’t need to say it. Daisy doesn’t need to say it. May doesn’t need the actions of an artificial being that had her memories and her body to say it. She doesn’t need that at all.)

 

“I’m glad she was there, then.” May finally says.

 

They both smile through the dark.

“Us too.”

It’s when Daisy is still, Jemma’s breaths are deep and even, and when May’s still staring at that dark ceiling that she thinks about how the man with the ugly smirk was right.

 

She _had_ liked the paperwork, after Bahrain. When her mind was numb and her fingers shook, she could almost convince herself that it was because of the stapling and the writing and all the hours sitting at a desk-- and not what it really was.  

But no matter how much she liked the paperwork, it didn’t work. No matter how much she pushed away everyone she ever cared about, it didn’t work.

 

No matter how much she tried to keep them away—the little English girl who jumped out of a plane and the little girl who didn’t even know her real name—she couldn’t.

 

She couldn’t stop herself from caring for them.

For loving them.

 

She thinks about the girl she couldn’t save, and she thinks about the girls that she did.

 

(and she wonders if they know that they saved her, too.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to em for betaing


End file.
